Heed the Doc's undoing

By David Miller

12:01AM BST 15 May 2003

'We don't study the opposition," Tommy Docherty provocatively said prior to the FA Cup final of 1976 in which Manchester United's attractive, attacking side were famously defeated by Southampton, from the old Second Division.

Never mind that Arsenal have just walloped Southampton in the Premiership, Arsene Wenger will not be making the same error as Docherty. Too much has recently gone wrong for the Cup holders now to suppose they have only to walk on to the pitch at Cardiff to win. Can't-lose finalists are an invitation to mockery.

Lawrie McMenemy, similar to what Tony Waddington did at Stoke City, was a kind of T E Lawrence, bringing inspiration and romance to the relative desert of the Second Division. With an improbable only goal from unsung Bobby Stokes - who tragically was to suffer a forlorn premature death as part of professional sport's forgotten flotsam - McMenemy assassinated the bookies, the pundits, this one included, and buoyant United.

"We were not given much chance by anyone," McMenemy recalls. "Bobby had been getting an increasing number of scoring opportunities each week beforehand, and missing them. I said to him at Wembley: 'You'll get one today!'

"Even for the semi-final, the favourites had been Crystal Palace from the Third Division, managed by Malcolm Allison and Terry Venables, who understandably dominated the press coverage, while we went off for a quiet few days at Frinton.

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"When you analyse the final, we were a Second Division side playing First Division football - which wasn't necessarily good for promotion! - and, also, we had experience. Players like Peter Rodrigues, our captain at left-back, had played in the World Cup for Wales, Jim McCalliog for Scotland in midfield and he'd been at Wembley with Sheffield Wednesday 10 years earlier. Mick Channon and Peter Osgood knew as much about the game as anyone at Old Trafford."

Docherty's verbal hand grenades regularly made news, yet he possibly had an inkling of difficulty when he forecast: "If we play as well as we are able, I'm optimistic. I won't say more than that."

United had earned admiration for their adventurous style, using two wingers, Steve Coppell and Gordon Hill, either side of England centre-forward Stuart (Pancho) Pearson, supported by three of the best midfielders in the league, Irishman Gerry Daly, Lou Macari and Sammy McIlroy. If they clicked, what hope had Southampton?

Plenty, in the event. "On the Friday, we visited Wembley at the same time as United," recalls McCalliog, who nowadays runs a pub at Wetherby. "I'd been with United 18 months earlier, didn't get on with Doc. I was talking with Pancho when Tommy Cavanagh, Doc's assistant, came up and said: 'You should be playing for us,' and I said: 'No, you're going to get beat.' We were so relaxed under Lawrie and we reckoned that United, off the field, had not been focused on the final."

It was McCalliog who paved the way to victory. McMenemy devised a three-point plan: for midfielders, Nick Holmes and Paul Gilchrist to help full-backs David Peach and Rodrigues stifle Coppell and Hill; for McCalliog to stretch United's backline with repeated long balls to Channon and Osgood; and for Southampton to evade United's 'pressing' by employing risky first-time passing. Eventually McCalliog was thinking: "We're strolling, where's their midfield?"

The Scot's searching passes steadily unhinged United. With seven minutes remaining, another long ball sent Stokes racing past Martin Buchan - not offside, the cameras confirmed - and a simple angled shot caught Alex Stepney off guard. The shy boy from down the road touched glory that proved as transient as the spring sunshine.